South, Southeast, and East Asia

Philip Lutgendorf

doi:10.1201/b21963-2

This chapter traces significant human beliefs, lore, and practices relating to non-human primates throughout Asia, focusing on regions that have been historically influenced by the worldview of the non-Abrahamic lifeways of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and by concepts of cosmic order such as dharma and tao, and the ideology of ahimsa (non-injury to other living beings). After surveying the earliest attested references to monkeys in South Asian literature, it examines the prominent role given to the simian allies of the divine hero of the epic poem Ramayana in its many versions, and especially to Hanuman, a monkey warrior and servant of the hero who has come to enjoy widespread veneration as a deity in his own right. It then traces the evolution of this story in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic cultures of Southeast Asia, wherein the role of a wily and seductive simian co-hero was further expanded. In the cultural spheres of Japan and China, the Rama story, though not entirely absent, was less influential in shaping human attitudes toward simian species, which nevertheless often appeared as folk heroes and deities who played the role of mediators between human and divine beings. Extensive and ancient Chinese lore concerning gibbons and macaques reached a literary apotheosis in a celebrated and popular late-16th-century novel depicting the westward journey of a pious Buddhist monk, accompanied by four supernatural traveling companions, one of whom-the protean "monkey king" Sun Wu-k'ung-easily eclipsed the human protagonist and has enjoyed worship as an intercessor deity in Taoist shrines. The chapter concludes with reflections on the changing ecology of Asian regions in the Anthropocene, which is mirrored in ambivalent human responses of outright conflict or tolerant coexistence with their humanoid primate co-inhabitants.

South, Southeast, and East Asia

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